


A Post-Apocalypse

by Consort of the Moribund (Inksinger), Inksinger



Series: Scars, Like Rivers [1]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Amputee, Bestiality, Biastophilia, Blood As Lube, Blood Kink, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Do not read if you are a minor, Do not read if you are eating, Dominant Masochism, Don't Like Don't Read, Don't Read This, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Extremely Dubious Consent, Fantastic Racism, Gang Rape, Gift Fic, Graphic Description, Homophobia, Human, Humiliation, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Magic, Misgendering, Mutilation, Mutual Non-Con, NSFW, Non-Consensual Bondage, Orbaz Bloodbane is in this and it's written by me, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Rape, Sadism, Sexual Abuse, Sexual Violence, Skull Fucking, Snuff, Torture, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Undead, Violence, Whump, Worgen, blood elf, do the math, look it's gonna be a really wild ride okay, nsfl
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:01:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28424400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inksinger/pseuds/Consort%20of%20the%20Moribund, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inksinger/pseuds/Inksinger
Summary: Having only barely managed to survive the Scourge invasion of Quel'Thalas, Ffamran Shadowsworn finds himself unable to remain within the borders of his ruined homeland while the Scourge roam Azeroth unchecked. Fueled by a desire for vengeance, he sets out alone to hunt down their strongest soldiers - and winds up biting off much more than he can chew.Written as a gift for littleartemis.
Series: Scars, Like Rivers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081940
Kudos: 8





	A Post-Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littleartemis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleartemis/gifts).



> Alternate title: How I Met My Fiancée. I started this as a commission for a startlingly eager fellow snuff writer; two years and some change later, I'm posting the first chapter as a belated Christmas gift to my starlight-on-water.
> 
> That's enough sap for now. On to the debauchery!

It was morning in Silverpine - not that you could tell as much unless you'd already spent a night there. The thick fog that drifted between the trees was only a little lighter in the daylight, silver shot through with traces of murky yellow, and the forest remained dim and damp beneath it.

That was fine. Ffamran had been trained to navigate worse places than this, and at least here it was clean, cool fog - not hot smoke filled with still-glowing cinders and the stench of blood and rotting meat.

It didn't matter. Not the fog, not the cold, not the damp - not even the lingering ache in his le— in what was _left_ of his leg, or in the stump where his arm had once been. None of it mattered. None of it made him grit his teeth against a scream of rage if he thought on it too long. None of it tied his stomach in knots to remember living through.

All that mattered was his prey - and _that_ was straight ahead of him, judging by the trail he followed.

Quel'Thalas laid in ruins, dark and broken and swarming with the undead even now. Silvermoon City was the one sure sanctuary the blood elves had left, and even it was shattered and hollow - with more than enough room to house what was left of the sin'dorei.

Trolls were moving in on their lands in greater numbers than before, drawn to the easy prize of an already ruined kingdom. The dead who could not be burned before they rose hunted the survivors like dead-eyed dogs after hares.

The Sunwell was gone. The Convocation was gone. The King was gone, and his son might as well have joined him.

The Scourge had taken everything from them.

No one else seemed to understand that. No one else seemed willing to strike back - to hunt Arthas and his zombies the way they had hunted the blood elves, and destroy them like they had destroyed Quel'Thalas. Everyone else was focused on grieving, or the trolls, or the growing agony of life without their Sunwell. No one had time or energy left to spare on the ones responsible for all of this.

Except for Ffamran.

Invisible teeth gnawed at his bicep, and he bit back a hiss and pressed onward as he waited for his body to remember that there wasn't an arm there anymore. There wasn't anything left beyond the shoulder - only metal and wiring and a few magical augmentations. Nothing that counted as flesh. Nothing that should be able to feel any pain at all—

Noise up ahead.

Ffamran slipped quietly towards a stand of young trees and crouched low among the thick shrubbery surrounding them. He was small and lithe, and dressed in dark colors to match the gloom of Silverpine. He was invisible here - he need only remain silent, as well.

He was hunting death knights, after all. He would need the advantage of surprise to take them down.

It wasn't enough to hunt the ghouls and geists and skeletons that wandered Quel'Thalas. They were powerless, mindless animals - victims even in undeath. But the death knights and the necromancers and the liches were the ones capable of raising more undead, whole graveyards and cities of them at a time. They were all sentient still, and very much aware of what they did. They deserved to die a second death, every last one of them. A slow and painful one, if it could be managed - but killing them on its own would be enough, if it meant crippling the Scourge just a bit more every time.

He had tracked whispers and rumors of something evil haunting Tirisfal Glade until he had stumbled across a bloody copse in the heart of Silverpine, its trees rent by massive claws and weaponry and its soil warm and wet still with cooling viscera. There had been a stench of necromancy about the place, and that stench more than anything had become the trail Ffamran had followed all night.

He didn't know what beasts had engaged his quarry before, but he knew no necromancer or lich would carry any weapon big enough to cleave smaller trees nearly in two, as some had been.

His breathing slowed and softened as he stared unblinking through the foliage. His body fell still as stone as he waited, until he could feel the air settle around him once again - until he was sure even the fog was swirling towards him, undisturbed now as he waited and listened.

He didn't have to wait long.

Two massive figures stalked through the forest, heralded by their heavy footfall and the shift of maille under softly clinking plate armor. They moved more quietly than he might have expected, but only a little more so.

And they were arguing.

“We should recall the pack,” one voice said - and Ffamran gritted his teeth for a moment as he recognized the speaker's Thalassian accent. An elf, then, newly turned. The voice itself seemed familiar, so it was someone he knew, too, though the echo to the man's voice made it difficult to identify the speaker by sound alone.

A second snorted, and when this one spoke it was with the accent of a Lordaeron native: “They're hunting. When they find something, they'll set up the call and we'll track them by that. We don't need sleep or rest, elf.”

“It's daylight,” the first speaker answered. “We're likelier to be caught by someone now than we were before, and the Master—”

There came the sound of a gauntleted hand striking flesh, and someone staggered heavily.

“The Master ordered that we bring as many mongrels as could be found,” the second speaker said. His voice dropped to a low, warning growl as he added, “If any mortal catches us at our work, we can feed them to the pack - or else wring some other use from them.”

“He's ordered us to remain covert,” the first speaker hissed. From the sudden slur along his words, Ffamran guessed his lip was split. “We're not to draw attention to ourselves beyond the worgen.”

Another hard strike, and at last the pair came into view beyond Ffamran’s hiding place.

Ffam's next breath caught and stuck in his throat.

The elf was Ra'siris. Sokar’s brother. A _paladin…_ or what was left of one. Now he wore the dark, skull-riddled armor of a death knight, and somehow undeath had managed to leach even more color from his pale skin and dark hair, and between those and the cut lower lip he was bleeding from the man looked more like a shade than any physical being - though the shades of the Scourge could be every bit as deadly, in their own way.

Ffamran shoved away the small, desperate little scrap of pity that tried to claw at him. That wasn't Ra'siris. It was wearing Ra'siris' face, and speaking with his voice, but Ra’siris was dead and this creature needed to die, too.

Ffamran turned his attention to the second death knight.

This one was human, taller even than R— than his elvish companion, and built wide and solid beneath his armor. Something about the way the human was geared made Ffamran think he must rank more highly among the Scourge than the elf - the detail was more intricate on the human’s armor, and where the elf wore the muted black and blue-greys Ffamran had seen most other death knights favor, this one wore armor colored gleaming black and bloody red.

He was wearing a helmet, though - something many of the other death knights tended to wear. But unlike theirs, this one's helmet had a device on either side: Bat wings. Small ones, outstretched to the sides like a nubby pair of horns.

Ffamran wondered which lich this human had pissed off to get stuck with such a ridiculous helmet. Or maybe the idiot thought it looked menacing.

“If I wanted to be nagged all through this festering dungheap of a forest, I'd have brought a cultist along instead,” the human snarled. _“Shut your mouth,_ or I'll _give_ you something to bitch about.”

The elvish death knight backed off, his face and eyes wary.

“No,” he said, “I'll leave off.”

The human barked out a hard laugh.

“You're womanly even by elf standards,” the human sneered. “Did you cower like that when we took your kin—?”

The rest was lost in the sudden thunder of blood in Ffam's ears, and as the world went red in front of him he leapt from his hiding place and lunged for the human with a howl.

He didn't expect the human to respond so immediately, and maybe he should have. Lights flashed behind his eyelids as the back of a gauntleted hand connected with his jaw, sending Ffamran tumbling back in a daze. He kept his feet, if only barely - but his vision was slow to clear, and before he could regain his bearings a hand closed around his throat and forced him back against a tree.

“Well, well, well,” the human death knight rumbled. Cold, fetid-smelling air washed across Ffamran’s face as he spoke. “We have a tag-along.”

Ffamran snarled and scrabbled at the hand around his neck, clawing at the fingers and striking the arm attached to it. When that didn't work he swung a foot out and tried to kick the bastard instead. His foot landed, and the strike was a solid one - but the death knight barely even shifted beneath it, as though all the force Ffam had put into it had amounted to a light slap against the larger man's knee, more irritating than truly painful.

“Feisty little one, aren't you?” The human grinned, and something dark and predatory flashed in his bruised, heavy-lidded eyes. “You've come a long way from home just to get yourself killed, little mouse.”

“Fuck you,” Ffam spat, still working to pry the bastard loose. He might as well have been digging at stone, for all the good it did him.

The human only laughed as he watched his captive struggle, and Ffamran was beginning to wonder if watching him squirm brought some sort of sick amusement to the bastard when Ra’s— when the other death knight spoke up behind him.

“Ffamran?”

Ffam froze - and somehow the human’s grin grew even wider in response.

“You know this one, Abyss’mal?” the human asked, never once turning away from Ffam.

Beyond him, R— “Abyss’mal,” apparently - started forward a step, eyes locked on Ffamran and one hand half-raised as though to reach for him. Shock flickered across his features for an instant… and then vanished, leaving the elvish death knight cold and aloof once more.

“He was my brother's lover, for a time,” Abyss’mal said.

“‘He’?” The human snorted. “This is a woman - even I can see that much.”

“This one identifies as a man,” Abyss’mal answered. “Among the elves, it is appropriate to refer to someone by their true identity, regardless of the shape of their body.”

“Well, we aren't _among the elves_ now,” the human sneered, leaning in towards Ffamran and letting his eyes roam along the rogue’s body. “This one is a woman; she'll be called as such, and count herself lucky for it.”

Ffamran lashed out and raked his hands across the bastard’s face. The human finally moved at that, drawing back with a snarled curse as Ffam again struck out at his arm and legs, working furiously to break himself free, to give himself some distance to be able to mount another attack.

But the human’s grip held firm, and even blinded by the ichor oozing from his injuries he was still able to swipe his free hand out and catch one of Ffam's wrists—

 _Agony._ The world went white around Ffamran, white and hot and loud with his own screaming. The good arm. The real arm, the bastard broke the one still made of flesh and bone - another scream, this one half in horror at the memory of losing the first one.

“Screams like a woman,” the human said as Ffam at last fell silent, shaking under his hand.

“He screams too loudly,” Abyss’mal replied. “Our mission, Orbaz—”

“—Can wait,” the human, Orbaz, replied. “It won't take that long to finish with this little rat.”

“T-Torture me all you want,” Ffamran hissed. “You won't get anything out of m—”

The hand around his broken wrist tightened down, and in the instant before fresh agony swept through him Ffamran was certain he could feel his bones crumbling under the crushing grip.

The hand on his throat slammed forward, choking off his next scream before it could tear past his lips.

“It'll be more than torture, woman,” Orbaz said, leaning in once more to murmur in Ffamran’s ear. “And yes, I will.”

Ffamran sensed the magic in the air an instant before it made contact with him in the form of cold, slimy tendrils snaking along his arms and legs, squeezing down until he felt the flesh of his two remaining limbs begin to bruise and heard his prosthetics creak in protest. He fought against those tendrils, thrashing and pulling for all his worth to keep from being immobilized, but whatever spellwork was being used was far stronger. Soon he was hopelessly bound, with his ankles held tightly together and his arms tied behind his back by steel-strong ropes of magic that reeked of rot and ruin.

Orbaz chuckled, and Ffam flinched as the larger man licked the side of his neck, long and slow. There could be no disguising or misinterpreting the intent behind _that._

“I'll unman you soon enough, little whore,” Orbaz growled against his skin. “So it really doesn't matter what you call yourself. Soon you'll be mewling just as much as any real man I've encountered.”

“Don't you _dare,”_ Ffamran spat, thrashing about again and only managing to knock his head against the tree and Orbaz’ helm in the process.

Orbaz laughed again and dragged him forward by the neck. Taken by surprise and bound as he still was, Ffamran couldn't steady himself and wound up falling to his stomach on the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of him for a moment - and in that time, Orbaz closed with him again, kneeling down and grabbing the back of his tunic to haul him off his face and as far back as his spine would allow.

“And what are you going to do?” the human asked as Ffamran struggled now simply to breathe. “You may play at being a man, little one, but you and I both know it's little more than bluster.”

“I'll carve out…your fucking eyes,” Ffamran wheezed.

Orbaz laughed again and shoved him back down, nearly hard enough to break his nose against the soil. Rather than pull away, however, the death knight levered his weight down on the hand still at Ffamran’s shoulders, pinning the rogue with such force that tears sprang to Ffamran’s eyes.

There was the sound of a blade being drawn - a short one, a knife from how swiftly the sound ended - and then Ffamran felt that blade hook under the straps on his right pauldron. There was a sawing pull, and then the strap snapped in half and the pauldron fell loose.

Ffamran’s blood ran cold, and once again he tried to wriggle out from under the death knight - only to have the air forced from his lungs as more weight suddenly slammed down against him.

“Sit still,” Orbaz growled. “Unless you'd _like_ to wind up losing the other arm.”

Ffamran gritted his teeth and fought on, straining against the magic binding his arms and the large, heavy hand on the back of his shoulders even as his skin bruised and broke and his lungs began to scream for more air. He'd be damned if he made things easy for this abomination, even if it meant losing another arm. Even if it meant becoming a walking automaton, more steel and magic than living flesh - better that than to say he didn't fight at all—

The hand at his shoulders came up and fisted in his hair, and all the world went white as agony lanced his scalp and neck and spine. He had been trained to fight through it if his hair was grabbed, all elvish soldiers were, but this was worse, much worse, he was certain he must be bleeding and his ears rang like a dwarfish cannon had been fired just beside his head—

He only barely felt himself thrown onto his back - and then the human drove one armored knee into his stomach, viciously enough that his tunic did nothing to guard him, and Ffamran choked on a scream as dark spots blossomed in the fading haze still clouding his vision.

“I don't like repeating myself,” Orbaz said, barely audible over the roar of blood in Ffamran’s ears.

A hand clapped hard around Ffamran’s jaw and forced his head back as the second strap of his pauldron was cut away, and between the strain on his throat and the knee still planted in his gut Ffamran was left unable to rally himself for another struggle as one, then both pauldrons were torn away and the seams of his tunic were ripped apart like sheets of wet paper.

Orbaz had to pull his knee away to get the tunic _off_ \- but when he did Ffamran could only gasp in relief as the pressure lifted from his stomach, leaving him free to drag at the air like a man drowning. Even the sensation of cold air against the skin of his torso only barely registered with the rogue.

“Abyss’mal,” he heard Orbaz say. “Recall the pack.”

There was no whistle from Abyss’mal, no shout and no skyward signal that Ffamran could see. Had the other death knight gone off to find the pack on foot? He must have done as Orbaz commanded; the human didn't whirl about to punish Abyss’mal the way he had done to Ffamran, or make any sound or motion that betrayed anything beyond the deliberate roughness with which he stripped away the last shreds of Ffamran’s ruined tunic.

“What's this?” Orbaz sneered, hooking a finger under Ffam’s binder and pulling until the elastic dug painfully between his ribs. “A fine, strapping young man like you, wearing a breast band?”

“More a man than _you,”_ Ffam spat, jerking to the side to try to dislodge the monster's hand.

Orbaz laughed, and pain blasted through Ffam’s chest and the wind was driven from his lungs so that he couldn't even scream as blackness blossomed over and over in front of his eyes. For an instant the world began to spin and darken around him - and then magic flooded him, cold and slimy and reeking of the grave, and with a sensation like ice encrusting the inside of his skull the dizziness and sleepiness slowly began to abate.

“Stay awake, little mouse, we've only barely begun.”

Orbaz knelt still beside him, and his hand was still fisted hard against Ffamran's sternum, pressing mercilessly down against the bone so that the pain continued to radiate through his chest. Ffamran squirmed once, then stopped with a gasp as Orbaz applied more pressure.

“There,” Orbaz cooed mockingly. “Now, let's see just how much of a man you really are.”

He moved, and Ffamran yelped as the tip of the death knight's dagger tore through his binder and gouged a line into his side. The band snapped away like a bowstring being released, and Ffamran's breasts joggled as they were freed. Ffamran gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut; he didn't want to see the look on the bastard’s face, not when he could already imagine it so clearly—

Orbaz laughed and slapped Ffam across the chest, and the elf yelped again at the sting that rounded through his flesh and the painful jerk of his breasts under the force of the blow.

“Such a masculine creature!” Orbaz said, reaching up with one hand to grip Ffamran by the throat again and keep him in place. “How did I ever doubt your claims of manhood?”

Ffamran squirmed and bared his teeth furiously - then froze as Orbaz ran his other hand up along his side, slowly, almost tenderly.

“I won't deny you're a strongly built little creature,” Orbaz murmured, glancing between Ffam's face and belly with an almost clinical expression. “If nothing else, you certainly seem dedicated to keeping up appearances.”

A ragged gasp broke through Ffam's teeth as the death knight took one of his breasts in hand and gave it a firm squeeze, flexing his gauntleted fingers in succession as though to massage the flesh beneath them.

“But you can't hide from me,” Orbaz said, grinning wickedly again and giving Ffam another, harder squeeze. “I wonder what you'll look like underneath the rest of that pretty elvish armor?”

Ffamran swore at him in Thalassian, but the moment he tried to thrash again Orbaz struck him across the face, hard enough to split his cheek open against his teeth. The world spun, but the magic that had kept him awake before still held strong, and all too soon his vision cleared again.

“Abyss’mal,” Orbaz barked. “Make yourself useful and hold this little fool in place. We'll be here all day if I have to keep stopping to correct her.”

 _“Correct—”_ Ffam's outraged snarl was cut short with another hard blow to the face.

This time, the forest reeled on an angle for what seemed a longer time. When it finally stopped, he found himself sitting upright - still bound hand and foot, but now also held tight against a large, armored body. Abyss’mal had one arm threaded through Ffam's, keeping them pinned painfully behind his back; the other arm lay wrapped around his chest, pressed underneath his breasts so that they were raised and squished together as though he wore a corset.

“Much better,” Orbaz said, kneeling now at Ffam’s legs. The human death knight ran his eyes unabashedly across Ffam's naked torso, lingering on his breasts with a leer that set the blood boiling in Ffam's veins. “You're less homely than I would have guessed.”

“Fuck you,” Ffam spat.

Orbaz laughed, then leaned forward - too close, far too close. Ffamran pressed back against Abyss’mal as much as he could, but doing so only raised his chest, put his breasts in easier reach for Orbaz to lower his face and drag his cold, dry tongue along the crack between them - once, slowly, and then again and again, like a dog lapping at a meaty bone. The bastard even brought his hands up to press Ffam’s breasts more tightly together, so that he had to chew and press his face more fully into them to reach farther down between them.

“St… Stop it,” Ffamran said, squirming and trying desperately to ignore the sudden heat uncoiling in his gut.

Orbaz only chuckled, and the sound was low and coarse and reverberated through Ffam's skin until goosebumps started to rise along his breasts.

Ffam tried to kick at the bastard and was rewarded with a hard twist of his arms - hard enough that the prosthetic creaked in protest, and the muscles of his good arm strained and began to burn with the rough handling.

“Sit still,” Abyss’mal growled, and Ffam shuddered at the sound of his voice.

Orbaz still didn't stop, nor even seem to notice Ffamran's struggling. Instead he chewed more feverishly at the assassin's breasts, and made no effort now at all to do so quietly. Just the opposite: Now he openly smacked his lips and seemed to work at slurping and sucking as noisily as possible, moaning all the while as though this was the finest bit of pleasure he'd had in years.

Maybe it was, Ffam thought. Maybe this sick fuck got off on treating his victims like fresh meat. Clearly he enjoyed raping them.

“Cut it out,” Ffam hissed, cringing back against Abyss’mal as best he could. He regretted it almost immediately: All he accomplished was a slight wiggle of his chest that wound up pressing his breasts more fully against the death knight's face and worsening the sounds the human made against his skin.

“You mewl like a little girl,” Orbaz said, lifting his head for a moment to grin up at Ffamran. Slobber gleamed across his mouth and chin. “Where did all the bravado go? I've broken virgins with more dignity than you.”

Ffam opened his mouth to snarl back at the bastard, only to break off instead into a sharp gasp as Orbaz lowered his head again and latched onto one of Ffam's nipples, sucking hard and squeezing a breast in each hand. Cold teeth bit down around the nub, hard and dull and painful enough to drag a yelp from Ffamran, and then the human’s cold tongue washed across, shocking the heated skin like an ice cube.

“Get off,” Ffamran spat, but this time when he tried to pull away the human bit down again, slowly applying more and more pressure until Ffamran squealed and jerked violently. It was enough to break the human's hold - but it tore his breast in the process, leaving a ragged, bloody set of gashes around his nipple that throbbed and burned like fury in the cold morning air.

“Aw,” Orbaz crooned. “What a shame - you've gone and ruined a perfectly good pair of tits.”

Then he leaned down again and licked at the gashes, digging his tongue into the wounds with each pass and sending fresh pain tearing through Ffam's chest each time.

“Stop it,” Ffam said, squirming again and cursing himself for the whining note in his voice. “Get off of me.”

Orbaz latched around his nipple again and sucked hard, dragging his teeth across the gashes and laving his tongue across the tortured skin, and with a sick twisting in his gut Ffamran realized the death knight was drinking his blood.

“You taste sweet, little girl,” Orbaz growled when he came up again. His teeth were stained scarlet with Ffam's blood, and paired with the man's mad eyes they made him look like a dog in the middle of a kill. “I could eat you alive and have nearly as much fun.”

“You're sick,” Ffamran hissed, trembling now.

“Would you prefer that?” Orbaz asked, lowering his voice and leaning in until Ffam could smell the blood on his breath. “Would you rather I dug into you with my teeth, little whore, and ripped you apart like the meat you are? I could keep you awake for a long time - long enough to watch me ruin the other leg and strip your c— down to the bone.”

Ffamran cringed back, drawing his legs tightly together as the trembling turned to hard shaking.

“You would scream so nicely for me,” Orbaz continued. He ran one hand down along Ffamran's belly as he spoke, stopping only when his fingers reached the tops of the assassin's thighs. “This whole wretched forest would ring with the sounds of your suffering.”

“You don't scare me,” Ffamran snarled.

“You are a liar,” Orbaz told him, his voice low and sultry.

The human forced his hand down between Ffam's thighs, slowly working his fingers down towards the elf's slit even as Ffamran drew his legs together as tightly as he could.

“Give it up,” Orbaz murmured. He leaned closer still, so that his lips brushed against Ffamran's as he spoke. “You won't get away from us, little one. It would be better for you to start cooperating.”

“What, and make it easier for you?” Ffamran jerked away and thrashed again, kicking both legs together to try to dislodge the bastard.

The bindings on his wrists and ankles broke suddenly, dragging Ffamran's legs and arms apart until they lay pinned against those of Abyss’mal. Then the shadows stretched and snaked around both sets of limbs, securing Ffamran tightly to Abyss’mal.

Orbaz chuckled and stood, moving off and back so that Abyss’mal could spread his legs and Ffamran’s, then kneeling again between their thighs with a vicious grin.

“No,” Orbaz said, stroking Ffamran's side as the assassin struggled with renewed fervor. “I prefer a victim who struggles. The challenge makes it all the more entertaining for me.”

His hand reached the top of Ffamran's prosthetic leg, and Ffamran swore as the death knight's cold fingers found the first of several straps and swiftly unfastened it. Without both legs—

“Get off!” Ffamran shouted - and then he doubled with a strangled cry as Orbaz buried a fist in his stomach.

Fingers dragged through his hair, sending pain lancing through his scalp and neck as his head was dragged back again.

“You're too damn loud,” Orbaz growled. “Keep this up, and I might decide to rip your tongue out and feed it back to you.”

There was a painful series of jerks at his leg, and then came the hideous sense of weightlessness as Orbaz unfastened the last catch and flung his prosthetic away.

It tumbled through the underbrush, limp and lifeless - there was no blood, and there should be blood because that was his leg, _that was his leg_ they'd taken his leg and his arm they were tearing him to pieces and he was alive and awake and they were killing him, breaking him apart like a puzzle and no one was coming to help him and he couldn't get free and _his leg was off they took his leg off they took his **leg—**_

Pain across his face - once, twice, and had he been screaming the whole time—?

A third blow slammed his teeth together, nearly severing his tongue in the process, and between the pain and the blood and the brief flash of cold, slimy, bitter-flavored magic that washed the first two away Ffamran nearly vomited the next time he tried to scream. Only the hand still clapping his mouth shut prevented him long enough for his stomach to settle again.

“Flinchy little wench, aren't you?”

Somehow he opened his eyes and immediately wished he hadn't - Orbaz leaned close, sneering down at him and still silencing him with one big hand over his mouth, and every panicked breath choked Ffamran with the stench of molding bones and old, decaying flesh.

“And you call yourself a man,” Orbaz said. “I've broken elvish men. _Real_ men. Even the loudest among them didn't shriek and carry on like this.”

His arm jerked. The other prosthetic - Orbaz was taking the other one—

The second Ffam began to struggle he was hit again, hard enough this time that even the magic they'd used on him before wasn't quite enough to keep him from blacking out.


End file.
